


At the Riverside

by elizajane



Series: 25 Ways to Kiss a Naked Man [7]
Category: Eureka
Genre: Established Relationship, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Hotels, M/M, Massage, Weekend Getaways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had taken Nathan roughly seventy-two hours into Zoe’s first semester at Reed to understand the gravity of their situation. [Nathan POV]</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Riverside

Jack falls asleep on the drive back to their motel, neck lolling awkwardly against his seatbelt like he’s a toddler nodding off in his carseat. Nathan risks a fond glance while they’re stopped at a light, swallowing a yawn of his own as he tries to remember which intersection will take him to the bridge across the Deschutes and back toward their motel.

It had taken Nathan roughly seventy-two hours into Zoe’s first semester at Reed to understand the gravity of their situation. And roughly a week after that to realize that he and the rest of Eureka were going to have to work swiftly and strategically if they wished to survive the full four years Zoe planned to spend there.

Nathan thinks he might not survive the first four _weeks_.

Jack is trying to play it cool, but jumps a little too fast every time his phone rings. In the evenings he can’t settle down. On the second night in, when they’ve managed to have dinner together at the bunker Jack gives Zoe’s usual place at the table such sad eyes that Nathan has visions of the man bawling into his ziti and vodka sauce.

He reaches over and pulls the bottle of merlot a little further away from Jack’s plate.

Jack _harumphs_ at him, silently, but does nothing more than stab disconsolately at his pasta.

Jo’s spending more time than she has in years out in the woods with Taggert, engaged in practice of one kind of another -- probably paintball target practice, or controlled explosions. Something violent. When he, Jack, Kevin and Allison are having breakfast at Cafe Diem on the first Friday of Zoe’s absence, three people stop by their table and mention to Jack that Jo’s been issuing tickets for traffic violations.

“She _is_ my deputy, you know,” Jack says mildly over his morning coffee, when the first complaint arrives.

Wordlessly, the kid standing by his elbow pulls the crumpled ticket out of his pocket and hands it over. Jack coughs in surprise, nearly spilling his coffee across his sundried tomato pesto and feta cheese stuffed french toast.

Equally wordlessly he hands the ticket to Alli, who passes it on to Nathan.

“Fuck you, too,” it read in Jo’s blocky hand, just above her signature.

The second one read, “For astounding ineptitude,” and the third “Because you’re pissing me off.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Jack promises, trying not to smile. Though the good humor doesn’t fully reach his eyes.

The next weekend, Jo disappears on Friday night and doesn’t reappear until Monday morning when she pulls up to her parking spot in front of the Sheriff's office as Nathan is saying his morning farewells. She looks (Nathan silently apologizes to Jack for even _forming the thought in his brain_ ) well-fucked and much less liable to pull a gun on anyone who looks at her sideways.

Jack looks like he’s thinking variations on this theme as well, and is feeling torn between relief and the urge to lace his latte with a shot of Glenfiddich to make the day more bearable.

Finally, Nathan unilaterally decides that he and Jack, at least, need a change of scene and quietly arranges with Fargo and Allison to take a four-day weekend away from GD, calls up the Riverside Motel in Bend, and books them a suite.

They leave the keys to the cabin, along with Mork and Mindy care, in Kevin’s capable hands, and are eastbound on Route 20 by seven o’clock the next Friday morning. They spend Friday night in the hot tub, Saturday hiking away Jack’s nervous energy up at Tumelo Falls, and when that doesn’t entirely do the trick Nathan calls up Sun Country Tours and books them for a late-season river run on the lower Deschutes the following day.

Sunday evening darkness is closing in around them as Nathan flicks on the turn signal and pulls into the motel parking lot, driving around the main building until he finds an empty space relatively close to their room.

After turning the key and yanking up the parking break he leans over and breathes against Jack’s ear: “Hey, love, time to wake up so you can go back to sleep.”

“Mm. Wasn’t sleeping.” Jack fibs, fumbling stiffly for the buckle of his seatbelt.

“Which would account for the not-snoring I heard a few miles back.” Nathan reflexively glances down at his phone -- two non-urgent messages from Allison, an instagram from Kevin -- before slipping it into his windbreaker and fumbling for the door handle.

Jack groans as he does the same and unfolds onto the pavement, “Jesus. Why’d you make a creaky old man like me spend all day in a giant rubber doughnut being doused by ice water?”

“Because six hours mountain climbing didn’t work. At least on the river you couldn’t check your phone. And you’re not a creaky old man.”

“I have a daughter in _college_.” This is a well-worn iteration of Jack’s grumpiness, so Nathan ignores him in favor of hauling their duffel bag out of the backseat and fishing for the keycard that will get them back into their room.

“We were a solid decade older than everyone on that raft,” Jack mutters as they climb the stairs to the second floor and make their way down the covered walkway to their room. “Did you see those two kids on honeymoon? I think even if you’d put them together they’d still be technically underweight. I wouldn’t have let ‘em on board. He was turning _blue_.”

Steve and Marie. They’d both shivered their way through the entire trip, Steve in the very front of the raft where every breaking crest soaked him anew. Marie had protested each time, insisting he _move back, honey, that can’t be good for you!_ while Steve had insisted -- Nathan suspected in the face of the other, fleshier, men on the raft -- that he was _fine, darling, never better_.

It was the first weekend in October, and the midday sun had warmed the air and the baked earth of the river canyon during the day, but the glacial runoff had delivered an uncompromising shock to the system every time the whitewater broke over the bow, their thermals only doing so much to help them retain heat.

“Roz was keeping an eye on him,” Nathan says mildly, referring to their ski bum-cum-river guide. She’d made them all change out of their wet gear and into dry clothes before she let them board the shuttle van back to Bend.

“And did you see ‘em at lunch? Steve couldn’t stop looking at the way I had my hand on your thigh.” Jack still notices, and resents, that kind of attention more than Nathan does, although it doesn’t stop him from touching Nathan in public the way it did in the beginning.

Nathan leans over the duffel that he’s dropped on the floor to give Jack a kiss. “Yeah, well. Assholes exist everywhere.”

It’s another well-worn exchange.

Jack sighs into the kiss, warm breath on Nathan’s skin. Drops his forehead on Nathan’s shoulder. “Sorry.” He means for more than this, Nathan knows: it’s an apology for his rubbed-rawness of the past weeks -- and the weeks before that, in anticipation of Zoe’s departure.

“It’ll --” Nathan swallows, thinking about change and loss, how things will inevitably be different now, than they were before. “It’ll get easier.”

Jack sighs again. “Yeah, I know.”

"Or at least,” Nathan revises, unable to stop his compulsive precision, “at least it’ll become _familiar._ ”

Jack laughs into his shoulder, gently, turns to kiss his collarbone where the jacket gapes: “Yeah, I know. But I don’t have to _like_ it, do I?” He pauses. “That’s not -- it’s not --”

“I know.” He does. Remembers how terrifying it is to let your vulnerable child walk away from your care, even when you know it’s what they need to do. What you need to do.

They stand there, in the doorway, in stillness after a long day of movement.

Eventually, Jack reaches out and pushes the door shut, turns the bolt for the night, then pulls Nathan across to the bed. Room service has been while they were gone, one of the maids straightening the bedclothes. Jack pushes them back, carelessly, pushes Nathan down against the mattress. Nathan lets himself roll back against the pillows, feels the muscles in his dominant shoulder protesting the hours of paddling, knows he’s gonna feel that twelve hours from now, maybe regret it.

Jack’s got a knee on the bed against Nathan’s thigh, following him toward horizontal with a kiss, though there’s something slow-motion about it -- Nathan would say _languid_ but for the fact that Jack’s body language reads more _bone-tired_. He lifts a hip and uses Jack’s inertia to roll him onto his back.

“Let’s get you undressed and into bed, huh?”

Jack smiles sleepily at the suggestion, running a hand over his eyes. “I’d say let’s take a shower first, but honestly I’m not interested in standing up again.” He groans, “I don’t think spending the day ankle-deep in glacial runoff helped yesterday’s blisters.”

“Here,” Nathan slides off the bed onto his knees and reaches for the velcro on Jack’s Teva’s. He pulls the sandals from Jack’s feet and drops them on the carpet. He can see the angry blister on Jack’s right heel from yesterday’s hike. He cradles the foot in the palm of one hand and works the thumb of his other along the arch of Jack’s foot.

Jack groans happily: “God, do that again.”

Nathan does, pressing his thumb up into the ball of Jack’s foot.

“Oh, yeah.”

Nathan works Jack’s right foot, then left, then makes his way up each calf. He can feel the tension in Jack’s muscles from the hours spent wedged in the raft, then in the van. He works the knots out in silence, listening to the quiet in the room, the faint sound of the Deschutes as it flows by below their balcony window. They’ve left the sliding glass door open the past two nights, despite the chill, so they can hear the water pass below them.

“God, I miss her,” Jack says finally, into the stillness. “Is this normal? To miss your daughter this much?”

“I missed Callister,” Nathan says. “Every day. I don’t know if it’s normal -- I’ve never been very good with normal. But I’m pretty sure it’s human.”

“She’s gonna do okay, yeah? You think she’s doing okay?”

Nathan bites back his usual qualifiers -- _there are no fucking guarantees_ \-- and just says, “She’s going to shine.” Which seems destined to become the truth. Zoe is that sort of person: she’ll leave her mark. Somehow.

“And Jo -- I did the right thing letting her go up there last weekend?”

“You weren’t going to stop her,” Nathan points out, moving up to Jack’s thighs -- first right, then left -- nudging him at the hips so he can pull off Jack’s quick-drying cargo pants and boxers. He runs a hand down Jack’s flank, cradles his hipbone momentarily. Lets his thumb graze the silky curve of Jack’s penis. Neither of them have enough energy to push it further tonight, but he never gets tired of reminding himself he _can_.

That Jack’s _his_.

“And yes,” Nathan follows up, “I think you did the right thing for both of them. Here, help me,” He tugs at Jack’s t-shirt.”

Jack struggles up onto his elbows so Nathan can help him off with the t-shirt and flannel he’s still wearing, then falls back down into the pillows. Nathan pushes Jack over and starts in on the muscles of his shoulder, the tension between his shoulder blades. Straddling Jack’s narrow hips, he enjoys the way Jack’s ass presses up against his groin, leaning forward to increase the pressure just enough.

“Mmm.” Jack hums drowsily, tenses his thighs so that Nathan feels the muscles move against his dick. A familiar rhythm.

Again, long minutes of silence as Nathan works his way from Jack’s shoulders down to his tailbone and back up again. Touching Jack, particularly naked, always stirs a response in the pit of his stomach, and by the time he’s smoothed his hands back up to the nape of Jack’s neck and Jack is practically purring beneath him, Nathan’s half-hard with interest.

He sits back, hands hovering over his belt buckle, considering -- but a snuffle indicates Jack is already three-quarters asleep and Nathan doesn’t feel like flying solo tonight, so --

\-- He leans forward and nips gently at Jack’s sun-kissed ear; it tastes faintly of river water and SPF 40. “Gonna brush my teeth. I’ll be back in five.”

Jack murmurs assent, fingers twitching in a fictive gesture completed only in his imagination.

Nathan runs a toothbrush over his teeth, empties his bladder, and makes his way back to the bed where he plans to slide in against Jack’s warm skin, and sleep at least until dawn crests over the mountains.

On his way to the bed, he detours to the sliding doors and pushes the glass open, so they can fall asleep listening to the river flowing by.

**Author's Note:**

> Location & Product Placement:
> 
> 1\. The [Bend Riverside Motel and Suites](http://www.bendriversidemotel.com/) on Wall St. (I have fond childhood memories of playing in their pool; I'm sure Nathan and Jack did some enjoyable making out in the hot tub).
> 
> 2\. I've been on both the Big Eddy and Lower Deschutes [Sun Country Tours]() in my day, each multiple times. I once shared a raft with the couple upon which Steve and Marie are based, although their awkwardness around Teh Gay is completely fabricated.
> 
> 3\. My dad almost transferred to [Reed College](http://www.reed.edu/) to finish his B.A., but then he met my mother in an English class on Chaucer. More on Zoe's college career to come!


End file.
